Category Archives: Atlas Shrugged

When a big city newspaper asked readers to share the title of a book, one influencing how you think, act or look at the world, the editors were overwhelmed by more than a thousand responses. Most readers chose fiction over non-fiction guides as windows into their thinking or as change agents to challenge their rock solid views.

Age was no definer. If Dr. Seuss, On Beyond Zebra, a fantasy alphabet for pre-schoolers, had captured you as an audience, by all means, share the story. A reader, age 70, did. For him, the Seuss alphabet, a tongue-twister and challenge to repeat, had delighted him as a 7-year-old. He was charmed, he wrote, by rolling fantasy words off his tongue: Floob for the letter F, zatz for the letter Z.

The reader of decades recalled the giggles of his childhood as he read to his own children and grandchildren. On Beyond Zebra reminded him the imaginations of the young should be encouraged by the adults in the room.

One 9-year-old wrote to the newspaper as witness to the charms of the book Eloise, the story of a savvy young girl, who, in the face of absent parents, depends on the staff at the hotel where she lives. Eloise is wise beyond her years, and, on pages depicting her life, she is living proof, for city children, family can be found, created even in a place as big as New York.

The writers letter to the newspaper affirmed the neighborhood adults in her own life as borrowed kin with kindnesses to recommend them.

In our grown-up world of realities, death is a subject we avoid. The recollection of Dr. Paul Kalaniths personal journey When Breath Becomes Air, after a diagnosis of lung cancer, led a reader to confront her aversion to serious talks with her aging parents.

After reading Dr. Kalaniths moving story, she set about asking the hard questions regarding her mothers and fathers wishes and committed to the nurture needed in the realities of their days, opening new conversation about their end-of-life questions and seeing them through their frailties with more understanding and patience.

One letter to the newspaper looked back over a lifetime of reading and singled out, of all choices, a cookbook Julia Childs, Mastering the Art of French Cooking as chapters re-ordering a life.

The readers story centered on her promising beginning, living in a city as a new bride, excited over a serious first job. She was 21, a career woman, (she thought), until she discovered she was pregnant.

It was 1964 when a woman with child was not welcomed in the corporate world. Her firm fired her, but, as a peace offering, an office manager sent her off with Julia Childs cookbook. After a miserable two months of nausea, the young wife, stuck at home, forced herself to read a chapter of the book and deal with the inner parts of a raw chicken.

By the time her baby was born, she was a serious student of French cooking, perfecting a passable souffl. Years later, she wrote of a life more loyal to weight control, but of a confidence found in mastering difficult recipes. While friendless, she dried her homesick tears and set about whipping cream in a shoebox-sized kitchen.

In an interesting twist, a reader singled out a book with a message she could not accept. For her, Ayn Rands, Atlas Shrugged read as a tome on personal self-reliance, setting aside the realities of interdependence in relationships, the need for the nurturing of children or an obligation to those lost in a busy world.

Reading the book strengthened the readers resolve to be involved, rather than self-focused. She wrote to credit the novel as a change agent in her life, one helping her to see outreach as needed connection and pushing her to speak out in her community.

I once read a small book to a grandchild, a boy, who loved any story that rhymed. Quiet as a mouse, he sat, snuggled against me, until I turned the last page, then he reached to close the book and covered his ears.

It took a while before I understood he avoided the last page of the story because he did not want it to end. None of my reasoning could change his mind. I gave up on my pleas once I remembered I had taken a paper clip to a chapter of William Styrons novel, Sophies Choice, to avoid reading the words I knew would seal the fate of two children in the plot.

The small boy to whom I read is now 18. He is still prone to stop and open a book bound and close at hand. Luckily, a future of reading promises him endless chapters, pages of words, perhaps the very ones, destined to change his life.

Judy Elliott is a longtime

resident of Marietta.

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A non-political question: Was there a book that changed your life? - MDJOnline.com

Opening my newspaper last Friday, I was quite surprised by J. Gilberto Quezadas op-ed, Heed the truth in Atlas Shrugged. Although I respect differing opinions, I felt duty-bound to express my resentment against the content not the messenger.

Ayn Rands works, such as Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, are philosophical tracts disguised as novels. And I am sure that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan who was one of her devoted acolytes listened to her every word while she lectured about the virtues of an unregulated free-market, rugged individualism and the elimination of social programs.

To Rand, anyone who relied on social programs (that pernicious Social Security system, Medicare, farm subsidies, public education, government pension programs, food stamps, WIC program, etc.) were, to use her term correctly, parasites.

The real heroes to Rand were those smart enough to use the capitalist system to amass great wealth, whom she considered to be paragons of virtue and superheroes of capitalism. They did not depend on handouts and were arguably prosperous because they used their reason to achieve greatness as espoused in her philosophy of objectivism.

Rands philosophy of objectivism has no redeeming purpose other than promoting the economic interests of people bankrolling it because the sole function of her philosophy is to justify wealth, explain away poverty as the result of ignorant parasites, and normalize the cruel attitude of the powerful and wealthy.

Here is what Jesus told a rich man, according to Matthew 19:21: If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.

What did Ayn Rand think of this? On The Phil Donahue Show in 1979, Rand argued that believing in God is an insult to reason and her objectivism principles.

In fact, Rand herself taught that there was no such thing as the public interests, and Social Security and Medicare only steal from creators and illegitimately redistribute the wealth.

Probably unknown to supporters of Rand is that when she reached her twilight years, she benefited from Social Security and Medicare because of mounting medical bills after surgery in 1974 for lung cancer caused by her heavy smoking. Cosmic irony has a way slapping you in the face.

If you benefit from Medicare, Social Security or even get a government pension check with free medical expenses like our U.S. senators, please dont be a hypocrite and bash Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Im sure Rand would never have said God bless America! since she was an avowed atheist.

Julian S. Garcia is a retired schoolteacher and former associate editor of ViAztlan: An International Journal of Arts and Ideas.

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Opinion: Ayn Rands views are nothing to celebrate - San Antonio Express-News

David DeCoteau's 'The Wrong House Sitter' is hardly the first to dip its toes into the enigmatic dark world of female obsession. For lovers of thrillers you maybe a little disappointed as it doesn't really match up to the erotic thriller genre like 'Fatal Attraction' but effectively carves a space for itself in the bountiful niche that has produced dozens of films based on fatal female obsession.

Shot in warm colors but within the confines of four walls 'Wrong House Sitter' is the story of Dan (Jason-Shane Scott) and his girlfriend Mary (Ciarra Carter). A happy working couple who are just dreaming of the life they will lead in Dan's new home. Later on, Dan encounters an innocent-looking woman in the bookstore looking for Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'. This new acquaintance is introduced to us as Kristin Turner (Anna Marie Dobbins). She tells him she is an aspiring writer working on her first novel and is trying to sustain herself by waitressing, house sitting and dog-walking jobs.

"It will sound strange to you", (he's right about that) he begins saying on hearing her three-line resume and ends up inviting her to house sit for him while he heads to New York on an assignment given to him by his editor Deb (Vivica A. Fox). His girlfriend, Mary, is constantly traveling for work so she can't help him out here. Dan's worried that criminals might target his house if they know he's not at home and so he employs Kristin to take care of it.

'The Wrong House Sitter' builds on a simple situation (man needs a house sitter), reels the audience in slowly with the innocent woman in need of a job trope and as the tension builds pushes the audience towards a fast-paced end where the house sitter's real intentions take over (she doesn't want to leave his house anymore) and she begins to infiltrate the man's life.

Kristin can be seen staring intently at Dan and Mary while they enjoy a chat by the pool or when they are making love in their bedroom right next to her. She's installed spy cameras in each bedroom of the house and keeps tabs on them constantly. When Dan is out of sight she can be seen sniffing his clothes and hugging his bedcovers. Her plans to insert herself into Dan's life become so twisted - drugging him, taking his pictures without his permission and trying to seduce him - that it leads to actual bloodshed. Eventually, as a fallout of her crimes, she is forced to leave the house and goes on the run. Dan and his editor Deb heave a sigh of relief, elsewhere Kristin is already sizing up her next victim.

One of the movie's underlying themes is the dangers of squatters and tenants who intend to overstay their lease. Dan discusses all the probable legal and unofficial ways to counter his tenant - kicking her out and changing the house's locks. He doesn't try either. On the basis of this movie, hauling Kristin to jail would have been the wisest way to go once he learned that she's played this trick plenty of times before.

The tense encounters between Kristin and Dan, including her attempts to seduce him and make his house "our home" keeps the interest from flagging at many points. Even the way Anna Marie Dobbins' Kristin manages to outwit him every time he tries to find a way to evict his "uninvited tenant" piques our curiosity. These small moments do make up, in parts, for some of the incredulous bits in the first half of the film. First, he signs an agreement she gave him without reading it and then stays alone with her in the mansion, allowing her to toy with him despite his girlfriend's repeated pleas that he stay the night with her instead of the psychopath who has taken over the house.

Unlike other movies on female obsession such as 'Fatal Attraction,' the obsessed woman trope is not explored deeply but the meat of the film lies in Dan's desperation to get rid of his obsessed tenant. David DeCoteau and Adam Rockoff's direction and script are able to keep the momentum growing throughout the story. Music is also used effectively to sustain the tension (sexual and otherwise) between Dan and Kristin. The performances of the lead characters look half-fleshed at times but Jason's portrayal as Dan, the harrowed house owner and Dobbins' role as the scheming house sitter, in places, manage to the give the characters some depth and the film, life. Carter and Vivica as Mary and Deb respectively, lend able support to the lead duo.

The Wrong House Sitter is a Lifetime movie and a part of their Wrong Movie franchise, a set of thriller films with Wrong being an important part of their titles. However, if youre a fan of this Lifetime movie franchise, is it worth spending close to 1 hour 23 minutes on this?

We'd say yes. It exhibits the marks of a decent thriller because its still fun to watch even when you know what will happen next.

''The Wrong House Sitter' released on January 24, 8/7c on Lifetime Movie Network.

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'The Wrong House Sitter' Review: Lifetime's thriller sustains tension by playing the female obsession card rig - MEAWW

I found out about the bomb down the street by text message on Tuesday at 4:22 p.m., just as I was locking my bike outside our sons preschool. It was a screengrab, actually: My wife had passed on a tweet from the Berlin police department with a photo of a huge archaeological excavation and construction site that we can see from our balcony in the center of the city.

A World War II bomb was found today at about 11:30 during construction work on the corner of Grunerstr. and Juedenstr. Our colleagues have blocked off the area, the bomb squad technicians are on the scene. What, my wife wanted to know, were we going to do?

This question is not as unusual as one might think, at least in German cities and others hit hard during the war. Between 1940 and 1945, Allied forces dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Nazi-occupied Europe. Thats about 1.25 million explosive objects in totalranging from small incendiary charges meant to set fire to wooden buildings to multi-ton blockbusters. An estimated one in five bombs dropped failed to explode, which translates to about 250,000 duds. Often, the explosive-packed shells penetrated several feet into the ground, and were later covered up by rubble and debris from other, more successful explosions.

This means many German cities are, more or less, built on top of live explosives. Western cities such as Cologne, Duesseldorf, and Bremen, which are closer to air bases in Britain and full of industrial targets, were particularly hard-hit, and bombs regularly turn up there.

Berlin, then and now the German capital, was a major target, too. Since the wars end, more than 2,000 live bombs have been recovered here. Some experts estimate 15,000 more may remain hidden under the fast-growing city. In the surrounding state of Brandenburg, the scene of bitter fighting in the last months of the war, police deal with 500 tons of munitions each year.

On my way up the stairs to the preschool, I scanned the local news. No one seemed overly alarmed. Headlines focused on the impending traffic chaos, not the 500-pound bomb itself. The street that passes the construction site is one of Berlins busiest, and nearby Alexanderplatz is a major transport node, with several subway lines and regional trains connecting in its multistory train station.

We had dinner plans and a babysitter on the way, and were going to see a drag show across town later that night. I was optimistic: As far as I could tell, only the building site itself had been closed off. Strapping my son into the box of our cargo bike, I told him wed ride home and see what the situation was.

Thinking back on the whole thing a few days later, pointing my five-year-old in the direction of a live bomb was perhaps a sign I wasnt worried enough. Defusing all these weapons, it turns out, gets trickier with time. The TNT and other explosives used in World War II munitions have no known expiration date, and their fuses get more unstable as the materials insideincluding 1940s-era plastics, capsules filled with acid, and complex mechanical timersdecay and rust.

But as we rode towards the apartment around 5 p.m., I saw neither police nor barricades. Our babysitter was waiting outside the building, and we all went upstairs. I grabbed an overnight bag and threw in some spare clothes, toothbrushes, and a Paddington Bear book. Just in case.

Within half an hour, my wife burst in with news. The police had tweeted again, this time with a map. The safety zone had been expanded to 300 meters, which included our historic neighborhood in the center of Berlin and Alexanderplatz, a massive, communist-era plaza that was the centerpiece of former East Berlin. Squinting unhappily at her phone, I saw a red line snaking right past our stoop. Wed all have to clear out while the bomb squad tackled the heavily corroded bombshell and its mechanical fuse.

Back on the cargo bike, my son and I stopped to talk with a police officer parked on the corner. In a little while theyll start knocking on doors and going through with loudspeakers, he told me, leaning out of his window into the wintry night. As soon as weve had time to clear everyone out theyll start working on the bombno way to know how long itll take. We had a head start, then.

It was getting to be dinnertime, and we decided to take a chance on a nearby pizza place. The host shrugged when I asked if they were going to stay open. Didnt they take care of that this afternoon? he asked. As far as I know were out of the blast zone. Information, it seemed, was traveling slowly.

As we ate, our phones chimed periodically with updates from a WhatsApp group of neighbors: The loudspeaker trucks were outside, hotel rooms nearby were being hastily booked. Suddenly my wife pointed out the window: Police were stringing crime scene tape outside, blocking off the plaza. Our bike was parked on the wrong side of the red-and-white barrier.

I rushed outside to move it, briefly panicking the host, who thought I was trying to skip out on the check. After some fast talking, I was allowed into the closed-off, empty plaza to retrieve it. Soon I was rolling it back under the tape, past two amused young cops. Go ahead, park it anywhere, just not in the danger zone, they called after me. Meanwhile, loudspeakers were blaring into the night: This area is now closed because of a World War bomb found nearby. Please leave.

By 8 p.m., half the area had been cleared. Anyone who couldnt afford a hotel or find someone to stay with was taken to the cafeteria of a nearby municipal building. By then we were drinking wine with friends who had offered us their guest room. Our son, apprehensive at first about leaving home and Legos so suddenly, was excited about the unexpected sleepover. School night rules were forgotten, and we stayed up long past his bedtime.

Because its 2020, we were getting live updates from the disposal scene via the police Twitter account. Once up close, the bomb squad discovered that the bomb was German, but equipped with a mechanical Russian fuse. In the final days of the war, it seems, the Red Army ruthlessly repurposed captured German munitions, arming them with Soviet detonators to rain German explosives down on the besieged German capital. Poetic justice. I poured another glass of wine.

At 9:38 p.m., another neighbor posted a message to the WhatsApp group: For some reason theyd decided to stay until police knocked on their door, and now they were on their way out. Altogether, 1,900 people had been cleared from their apartments, offices, and hotels in the space of a few hours. Bus lines were rerouted, traffic backed up, and subway service to the area canceled.

By German standards, all this was pretty minor. In 2011, an unusually dry summer revealed a 4,000-pound bomb in the middle of the Rhine River where it passes through Koblenz. Authorities hurriedly cleared 45,000 people out.

The threat is present and persistent enough that new construction projects often require permits from specialists, who sign off only after examining World War IIera aerial photography for signs of unexploded bombs. In 2017, authorities had to move 60,000 people out of central Frankfurt when a British bomb containing a 1.4-ton explosive payload was located based on aerial photos that had been taken from a spotter plane a few days after a raid. The logistics were daunting: The danger zone included two hospitals, 10 old-age homes, the citys police headquarters, the German Central Bank, and one of the countrys national libraries.

Hell, our evacuation wasnt even the biggest to take place that Tuesday. Around the time the bomb down the street from me was uncovered, 10,000 office workers in Cologne were cleared out of the city center at mid-day while technicians defused an American-made 1,000-pounder. Those of us in Cologne are pretty used to this, a police spokeswoman told the media dismissively afterwards. We dealt with 25 bombs just like this last year alone.

Still, as I went to sleep I felt a weird rush, as though after 15 years of living in Germany and writing about the countrys history, I had successfully completed a rite of passage. I was asleep around 11:45 p.m., when the bomb disposal technicians began their work. At 12:13 a.m., less than half an hour later, the device was defused. In the early hours of the morning it was transported to a forest on the edge of town, where it will be safely detonated in the next few weeks.

The next day, our son had something new to tell his friends at preschool. Meanwhile, our neighbors posted updates to the WhatsApp group one by oneand couldnt resist some commentary. It was all a little over the top. Surely there are better ways to defuse bombs nowadays, one wrote. So much work and effort, and not even a little bang. Berliners can be hard to impress.

You can join the conversation about this and other stories in the Atlas Obscura Community Forums.

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What Happens When They Find a World War II Bomb Down the Street - Atlas Obscura

By Sara WilsonFor the Opelika Observer

Will Fairless, one of two interns working at the Opelika Observer this spring semester, is a senior majoring in journalism at Auburn University. After graduating in May, he plans to attend law school or potentially pursue a career in the journalism field.I have taken the LSAT and applied to some law schools. If that doesnt work out, my internship with the Opelika Observer will provide me with some experience to pursue a career in journalism, Fairless said.He is originally from St. Charles, Missouri, right outside of St. Louis, making him a big Cardinals fan. In his free time, he likes to play golf and basketball. Playing basketball is something he has in common with his younger brother, age 19, who plays college basketball.When he is not playing basketball or golf, Fairless likes to read and watch movies. Two of his favorite books are A Time to Kill and Atlas Shrugged. His favorite movie of all-time is A Few Good Men.Another way that Fairless enjoys spending his time is watching his favorite television show, the American version of The Office. He also enjoys catching up with his friends from back home through playing video games.

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Intern introduction: Will Fairless - Opelika Observer

The task seemed easy enough. I want a CT scan of your neck, the specialist told me. After months of tonsillitis, sore throats, and unnerving fatigue, Id grown edgy about the hard lump on my neck enough to make an appointment with him in December, before my health insurance had even kicked in. Hed looked down my gullet, but held off on running any tests, telling me to come back in January when it wouldnt cost me so much. A month later, he now agreed, it was time for some advanced imagery of the mass, just to be sure.

This shouldnt be hard. The insurance policy Id gotten for $557 a month, on the Healthcare.gov exchange, since I worked remotely for my employer as a contractor, sans benefits covered the hospital across the street, operated by my specialists healthcare group; I could walk over, get the scan, and he could access the imagery instantly.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

But of course, as hundreds of millions of Americans know, nothing in our privately managed healthcare system is that easy. The radiologist across the street considered me a hospital outpatient, so my insurance treated the office as an out-of-plan provider, which would cost me thousands upfront. The radiologist, however, did offer me a cash self-pay rate of $300 for the procedure.

Wait a minute, I said. How come self-pay is so much cheaper than if I use my insurance?

Self-pay is based on the lowest negotiated rate, the phone representative told me, which is the Medicare rate. Medicare, the government program that covers some 60 million American seniors and young people, has immense price-bargaining power, more than any private insurer. Its almost enough to make one wonder why Americans dont demand Medicare for all.

However, there was a catch to paying in cash, the phone rep told me: Reading the imagery would cost extra, and he couldnt tell me how much.

Fox News audience support Sanders Medicare for All proposal

So began a day-long odyssey of calling clinics and insurance reps, getting numerous approvals, reconciling conflicting and sometimes seemingly made-up information, just to find someone who could provide a fancy X-ray of the unwelcome swelling in my throat without bankrupting me.

As I worked my way through corporate phone trees and asked pointed questions to which there were apparently no answers, I live-tweeted the experience, and it apparently resonated with social media users (to the tune of 4.7 million impressions, a figure thats almost as inscrutable to me as my policys copay for in-plan advanced imaging.) Americans shared my viral thread, adding their own billing, pre-approval, and care-delay horror stories to it; foreigners replied too, expressing their disbelief that such a basic medical need, provided to them at low or no cost by their governments, could become so costly or time-consuming.

I was not always so dogged in dealing with healthcare costs. When I went off to college, I became the first member of my immediate family to have medical insurance. My father was a self-employed laborer with a middle-school education; my mother was a homemaker. There was no employer to provide insurance, and no extra money to pay for a policy. I never went to doctors as a kid unless I was sick as hell, and then we went to a doc in the box, an urgent-care clinic. The first time I remember seeing a dentist was when I joined the Navy. During enlistment, I was asked for the name of my primary care physician; I needed someone to explain what that was to me. The concept of having a dedicated doctor seemed like a wild luxury.

Despite my relative inexperience, I was a healthy young white man, free from most wants, and I assumed the system in which I grew up was the best of all possible systems. I spent those early years in college as an Ayn Rand-loving libertarian who believed in freedom over safety, individualism over collectivism, and false dichotomies over nuanced understandings. America was great not in spite of its worship of the almighty dollar, but because of it: Corporations, I imagined, didnt need regulations and laws to be honest, transparent, and decent to their consumers. The desire to make a profit kept us honest.

Healthcare was no exception to this fiscal-based ideology of mine. You got what you paid for, and medical innovation didnt come cheap. Rich people get better care? They earned it, Id tell people. To rely on government to provide your healthcare or cover its costs, I believed, was to give up your agency and dignity.

But if youre an American and youre reading this, be honest: Whens the last time you looked around in a clinic lobby, a specialists office, or a hospital waiting room, and saw agency and dignity?

We are all numbers insurance IDs, group plan numbers, medical billing codes, far-into-the-future appointment times. All our lives, we have been told that long waits, impersonal care, incompetence, and indignity are the province of other countries socialized healthcare systems.

What, then, do you call the Kafka-esque 21st century American medical badlands?

Since my Atlas Shrugged-reading days, Ive spent nearly two decades in the American workforce. I moved and changed jobs often, changing (or losing) insurance plans each time. Ive been misdiagnosed by specialists running the same tests and reinventing the same wheels over and over again. Ive lost weeks of my life and work productivity being an advocate for my own health, and, at times, my familys, in a system that does you no favors and often insists that there is no easy answer to the question: How much will this cost me?

Theres that old saw about how a conservative is a liberal whos been mugged by reality. Like most of the workers I know in my millennial generation, I've been mugged, beaten, and left for dead a couple of times by reality, but it's made me a believer in radical change. What Ive concluded is that you can care about people, or you can care about maximizing revenues, but not both. America is the proof.

The American health system is an insane patchwork of privileged, cash-hoovering cartels and fiefdoms, and everyone knows it. I worry about its ability to address my health, sure, but more to the point, I worry about its capacity to bankrupt me and the people I love. And I worry about a thin, pale version of national patriotism that believes the fault lies with the underemployed, sick and afflicted, rather than the system that's supposed to tend to them.

Visitors wear face masks as they sit inside the Venetian casino hotel resort in Macau, after the former Portuguese colony reported its first case of the new SARS-like virus that originated from Wuhan in China.

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Marine One helicopter with US President Donald Trump on board arrives for the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland

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A man walks between burning tires during ongoing anti-government protests in Najaf, Iraq

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Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, (second row, left to right) arab League Secretary General Ahmed Abul Gheit, African Union (AU) Committee Chairman Moussa Faki, European Council President Charles Michel, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pose for a family picture during a Peace summit on Libya at the Chancellery in Berlin

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Sweden's Jennie-Lee Burmansson competing in the final run of the Freestyle Skiing Womens Freeski Slopestyle at the Leysin Park in Leysin, during the 2020 Lausanne Winter Youth Olympic Games

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Firefighters take part in a demonstration to protest against the attacks against them during interventions in Strasbourg. During the New Year's Eve night in Strasbourg, two firefighters were notably injured following a projectile thrown onto the window of their truck. Last weekend, three firefighters were victims of a stabbing by a person they came to rescue in the outskirts of the city.

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People enjoy the frozen lake of Houhai in Beijing ahead of the Lunar New Year of the Rat. - The Lunar New Year falls on January 25 this year and marks the Year of the Rat.

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Taiwanese soldiers operate a CM-11 battle tank during an exercise at a military base in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan

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A resident who briefly returned home to retrieve belongings carries figurines of Jesus Christ and Mother Mary in Laurel, Batangas province, Philippines. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the alert level to four out of five, warning that a hazardous eruption could take place anytime, as authorities have evacuated tens of thousands of people from the area

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Mini's driver Jakub Przygonski and his co-driver Timo Gottschalk compete in Stage 8 of the Dakar 2020 around Wadi Ad-Dawasir

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People take photos of a phreatic explosion from the Taal volcano from the town of Tagaytay in Cavite province, southwest of Manila

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An injured Syrian child cries after being transported to a clinic for treatment following an air strike by pro-regime forces on the nothwestern city of Idlib

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Vets and volunteers treat koalas at Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, southwest of Adelaide, Australia

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Devotees follow the carriage transporting the statue of the Black Nazarene during an annual religious procession in its honour in Manila. Thousands of barefoot devotees joined the religious procession hoping to touch a centuries-old icon of Jesus Christ, called the Black Nazarene, which is believed to have miraculous powers

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People stand near the wreckage after a Ukrainian plane carrying 176 passengers crashed near Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran

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Mourners gather around a vehicle carrying the coffin of Iranian top general Qasem Soleimani during the final stage of funeral processions, in his hometown Kerman. Soleimani was killed outside Baghdad airport Friday in a drone strike ordered by US President Donald Trump, ratcheting up tensions with Iran which has vowed "severe revenge". The assassination of the 62-year-old heightened international concern about a new war in the Middle East and rattled financial markets

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Actor Rose McGowan speaks at a news conference outside a Manhattan courthouse after the arrival of Harvey Weinstein, in New York. Weinstein is on trial on charges of rape and sexual assault, more than two years after a torrent of women began accusing him of misconduct

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Mourners march behind a vehicle carrying the coffins of slain major general Qassem Soleimani and others as they pay homage in the Iranian city of Mashhad

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Rescue personnel search for bodies among mud and debris following a landslide caused by heavy rain in West Java, Indonesia

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A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport is seen following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of President Donald Trump

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Boats are pulled ashore as smoke and wildfires rage behind Lake Conjola, Australia. Thousands of tourists fled Australia's wildfire-ravaged eastern coast ahead of worsening conditions as the military started to evacuate people trapped on the shore further south

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Photographer Matt Roberts reacts to seeing his sister's house destroyed by a bushfire in Quaama, New South Wales, Australia

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A man rides a donkey cart against the last setting sun of 2019 in Lahore, Pakistan

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A Skycrane drops water on a bushfire in Bundoora, Melbourne, Australia. According to local media reports, thousands of residents and tourists were forced to evacuate in the state of Victoria as soaring temperatures and winds fanned several bushfires around the state

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A jumper soars through the air during a trial jump at the first stage of the 68th four hills ski jumping tournament in Oberstdorf, Germany

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Revellers dressed in mock military garb throw eggs as they take part in the "Els Enfarinats" battle in the southeastern Spanish town of Ibi on December 28, 2019. - During this 200-year-old traditional festival participants known as Els Enfarinats (those covered in flour) dress in military clothes and stage a mock coup d'etat as they battle using flour, eggs and firecrackers outside the city town hall as part of the celebrations of the Day of the Innocents, a traditional day in Spain for pulling pranks.

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The Panamanian-flag cargo ship "Zelek Star" is pictured after being washed up on a beach in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashdod during a storm

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Monks wearing solar filter glasses watch the "ring of fire" solar eclipse at the Gaden monastery in a Tibetan colony in Teginkoppa, India

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A participant in a Darth Vader costume jumps into the water during the 110th edition of the 'Copa Nadal' (Christmas Cup) swimming competition in Barcelona's Port Vell. The traditional 200-meter Christmas swimming race included more than 300 participants on Barcelona's old harbour

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Children dressed as SantaClausduring celebrations on Christmas Eve at a schoolin Amritsar

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Palestinians wearing Christmas costumes distribute gifts to children seated atop the rubble of a house demolished by Israel, reportedly for not being built with official licensing in the village of al-Khader, west of of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank

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A journalist gets pepper-sprayed after a heated exchange with police during a rally in Hong Kong to show support for the Uighur minority in China. Hong Kong riot police broke up a solidarity rally for China's Uighurs -- with one officer drawing a pistol -- as the city's pro-democracy movement likened their plight to that of the oppressed Muslim minority

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Children react as a Bengal tiger licks the glass surrounding its enclosure during the "Animal Christmas Party", where the youths were treated to a tour of the Malabon Zoo, in Manila

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In this long exposure photo, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Boeing Starliner crew capsule lifts off on an orbital flight test to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral

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A freediver wearing a Father Christmas outfit poses underwater off the coast of the northern city of Batroun

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People rally in support of the impeachment of US President Donald Trump in front of the US Capitol, as the House readies for the historic vote

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Protesters set fire to dumpsters and tires as they block a road in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon

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People ride a merry-go-round at the Christmas Market at the Red Square in Moscow

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The Red Rebels, part of the Extinction Rebellion Australia demonstrator group, participate in a climate protest rally in Sydney. The group rallied in front of the landmark Sydney Opera House demanding urgent climate action from Australia's government, as bushfire smoke choking the city caused health problems to spike

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Protesters block a road after setting buses on fire during a demonstration against the Indian government's Citizenship Amendment Bill in Howrah, on the outskirts of Kolkata, India. Protests against a divisive new citizenship law raged on as Washington and London issued travel warnings for northeast India following days of violent clashes that have killed two people so far

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A huge cloud of black smoke raises over a burning warehouse in the southern outskirts of Moscow. There were no immediate reports of any casualties, but one fire fighter was injured and 25 ambulance cars and a special air testing vehicle are at the site, they added

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I used to be a libertarian. Then the US healthcare system taught me how wrong I was - The Independent

Palm Coast can finally be known as the home to some very, very serious and joyous book lovers.

Two weeks ago The New York Times Opinion department asked readers What book new or old, fiction or nonfiction has influenced how you think, act or look at the world, and to do so in no more than 200 words. On Sunday, the paper ran 14 responses that made the cut over a full page in its Sunday Review sectionjust 14 out of more than 1,300 submissions. Among those 14, and in third position no less, was none other than that of Rick de Yampert, FlaglerLives culture writer, resident oracle of pop, sitar troubadour and Palm Coast resident.

Others went for standards like Hellers Catch-22 and Camus Stranger, Aureliuss Meditations and Betty Friedans Feminine Mystique, the inevitable Dr. Seuss and the required Color Purple, or the occasional literary atrocity like Atlas Shrugged, as the contributor of that item herself realized: Who wants to live in a world where the weak are thrust aside and forgotten? Barbara Lipkin of Naperville, Ill., wrote. Her words allowed me to crystallize my own thinking. I grew up.

De Yampert chose one of the more unexpected titles to make the cut: Go, Dog. Go!, by P.D. Eastman. In his characteristic Kerouacian joy for words, de Yampert describes the 1961 childrens book as an epic that has it all: Drama where are those dogs going? Humor dogs on scooters, flying helicopters and driving cars! Existential angst why doesnt he like her hat? Its multicultural blue dogs and red dogs and green dogs! Its a love story why yes, he does end up liking her hat!

It was de Yamperts first book in prekindergarten, and from there it was only a short skip to William Butler Yeats, Camus, Robert Anton Wilson and the 10,000 mostly nonfiction books in my home library on Irish history, African-American history, my Pagan spiritual path, world religions and metaphysical matters, the Middle East, quantum physics, the Beatles and rock music, yadda yadda yadda.

Palm Coast doesnt often appear in the Times: in the vows section the occasional parent of the bride or groom is said to be living in retirement there, the town makes appearances in an obituary here and there (in December 1993, Rabbi Maurice Davis, an authority on religious cults in the United States, died at his home in Palm Coast), the wildfires of 1985 scored a mention for Palm Coast, so did of course ITTs conjuring of Palm Coast out of expanses of scrub, as with a long 1974 article about the developments environmental controversies and ITTs goal an investment of $1 billion and 600,000 residents by 2000, the Timess Jon Nordheimer reported.

The most recent mention of Palm Coast in a Times article was for dreadful reasons: the case of the Buddy Taylor Middle School teacher forcefully removing a student from a classroom and shoving him into a hallway, and the reaction the story, originally published on FlaglerLive, triggered (drawing a substantial amount of support for the teacher, but also condemnation.)

De Yamperts Palm Coast byline goes some distance to erase the black eye.

The Timess 200-word quota was not enough for us, so we asked him a few more questions about his books and his brush with The Times.

What are the titles on your nightstand right now? Its more a matter of books I have strategically placed throughout my home so that they will pester me and say, Hey, remember that you promised to read me soon! One is Earth God Risen: An Inner History of the Horned and Horny Ones, by British occultist-esotericist Alan Richardson. Its actually a curious reworking not a revision of his 1992 book Earth God Rising: The Return of the Male Mysteries. The earlier work was monumental for me as I was finding my way onto my Pagan spiritual path. Richardson explores ancient myths of the horned god, which figure prominently in the modern Pagan revival, while also giving his insights on how those myths come alive today such as the time he had a vision of Cernunnos, the antlered God of the ancient Celts, at a Rolling Stones concert. For the new work, Richardson reprints much of the original edition but also drops in lengthy new commentary, in boldface and at his whim, throughout the text. The result is that his current, older self is pondering and critiquing the thought of his younger self. Its a fascinating approach. I so wish Albert Camus had done the same with the essays in his The Myth of Sisyphus-another book thats always nearby for re-reading.

Another always-near book, a gift from my late wife Cheryl, is actually like a daily devotional for me: Kindling the Celtic Spirit: Ancient Traditions to Illumine Your Life Throughout the Seasons by Mara Freeman. Other currently nearby books: Many by mystic East-meets-West philosopher Alan Watts but especially his mountain journal titled Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, the collected poems of Yeats (always at hand), a hilarious doomsday book titled Criswells Forbidden Predictions by a joke psychic who I am certain some people take seriously, and the memoir Life on the Rocks: One Womans Adventures in Petroglyph Preservation by Katherine Wells, who lived 10 miles from where I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Why these titles? I find that the majority of my reading these days somehow touches on spirituality. Thats true even of my fetish for the Beatles (I think I own every major work on the group). Another of my nightstand books I could have listed above is Steve Turmers The Gospel According to the Beatles, which examines their lives, music, history and pop-culture influence through a spiritual lens, and not just that of Christianity.

What took you to respond to The Times query? Like most book junkies, I love talking books. I came across the Times solicitation online and, to paraphrase Yeats, my wits went on a fantastic ride, my horses flanks spurred by childish memories, and my appreciation of Go, Dog. Go! wrote itself in about five minutes.

What other titles were in contention for the one book that changed your life? Savvy readers of my short essay about Go, Dog. Go! will realize I pulled off a common parlor trick for any of those scenarios in which one is asked to pick their one favorite of whatever category is under consideration. That is, I was able to sneak in multiple answers under the guise of picking just one life-altering book. So yes, the poems of Yeats, Camuss The Plague as well as his essay The Wind at Djemila, and Robert Anton Wilsons fiendishly clever romp through the occulture and metaphysical counterculture of the 1960s titled Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati all changed my life.

And I am pissed that I failed to mentioned Kurt Vonnegut in my Times piece. I will confess here that while I adore Slaughter-house Five, I am more fond of his novel Breakfast of Champions, and I absolutely love his essay collection, Fates Worse Than Death. During my 30-year career as an arts and entertainment writer at various daily newspapers in the South, I was able to review Fates. Uncle Kurt, as I lovingly dubbed him in my review, was kind enough to reply to me in writing when I sent him that article via his publisher. (By the way, Robert Anton Wilson and poet Sonia Sanchez also were kind to reply to me when I sent them articles I had written about their work.)

Does reading literature still have a serious place in our culture? As should be apparent in my replies above, I am somewhat of a freak: the bulk of my reading is nonfiction essays and book-length studies on subjects that interest me: metaphysical matters, alternative spirituality, world religions, Irish history, African-American history, the Middle East and especially the insights of Palestinian public intellectual Edward Said, the Beatles, critical discussions of the works of both fiction and nonfiction writers, etc. So, to address your question: If by literature you mean novel-length fiction, and especially serious fiction . . . hmmmm. I am reminded of Vonnegut talking about his sister in one of his essays: She was the sort of woman, he wrote, who might roller skate through art museums at a goodly pace and all the while say Got it! Got it! Got it!

I imagine I am sort of that way concerning lengthy fiction: My reading list, indeed almost my entire library, is designed to stimulate my thinking by engaging how others perceive the world, whether the subject at hand is rock music, Indian raga, the Yoruba religion, the weirdness of quantum physics, the amazing modernist paintings of Jack Yeats, tarot cards, or crows and ravens. (By the way, I am under contract to write my own book on those birds, tentatively titled Crows and Ravens: Birds of Myth and Magic.)

I think I am like Vonneguts sister: Why take a long, time-consuming trip through a novel by Philip Roth, Nabokov or Toni Morrison when I can digest an Alan Watts or Albert Camus essay in 20 minutes and then spend hours pondering the meaning of life? I got into daily journalism because I wanted to interview creative peoplewriters, artists, musicians, etc.about how and why they do what they do. Consequently, for whatever freakish reason, I would rather read an interview or critical study of Philip Roth than read one of his novelsalthough I must get to Operation Shylock: A Confession one day soon.

However, whenever I have to take a lengthy road trip by car, I go to the county library and stock up on two types of audiobooks on CD: Star Trek tales or the mysteries of Tony Hillerman, which are set in the Navajo lands of northern New Mexico near where I grew up. You can take my Tony Hillerman audio mysteries from me when you can pry them from my cold dead fingers.

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Rick de Yampert in New York Times as Palm Coast Book Lover - FlaglerLive.com

It was always going to be controversial. A 25-foot-tall sculpture of a man cradling a condo, standing on multi-coloured cubes. Commissioned by the developer Camrost Felcorp and made by celebrated German artist Stephan Balkenhol, Toronto Man (2019) is one of the citys newest public artworks. It got a mixed reception when it was unveiled in August.

Balkenhol spends his time living between Meisenthal, France and Karlsruhe, Germany, where he teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts. Hes been a commanding presence on the European art stage for decades, and the work is the sculptors first commission in North America.

NOW spoke with Balkenhol by email over a number of weeks this fall. His comments made clear why he thinks his work has sparked dialogue: The sculpture is just a pretext for a conversation Toronto needs to have with itself about rapid development in the city.

Located at 101 St. Clair West and facing the street, the work is part of a three-condo development complex on the site of the former Imperial Oil building. It has provoked consternation ever since it went on display: here is the invasion of the city by developers made literal. Is the artist mocking us? Toronto Man inspired a social media debate, with one Twitter user noting that it represents a certain class dominance over the society that is supposed to be diverse and multicultural. Its a fair summation of the ambivalence the work has prompted.

Toronto Man is big. At 25 feet in height, its not at human scale. When asked how he decided on the size of the work, Balkenhol called the sculpture big, but not too big.

The location on the street in front of the high buildings demands a certain height of the sculpture, he said. It was meant to be a kind of landmark and should be perceived [by] the people driving on the road as well for those who walk by.

The rough-hewn surface of Toronto Man is characteristic of Balkenhols practice. Using a carving style that dates back to the Middle Ages, he hacks and chisels his figures out of single blocks of wood. Casting the figure in bronze and adding a coat of paint is the artists contemporary update on this tradition. At the same time, the rustic look conveys a message about the techniques medieval origins.

The figure of a standing man wearing slacks and an open collared shirt often recurs in Balkenhols work. A Twitter comment noted that Toronto Man has a Soviet messianic look in his eye. Is the figure some kind of new New Soviet Man? Or, more likely, John Galt, the libertarian architect hero of Ayn Rands 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged? In the book, Rand conflates architecture with a maverick world-building that cares not for the destruction it leaves in its wake. Torontonians could be forgiven for feeling that developers are equally disruptive, given the impact of condo development on city life.

But this reading falls short of seeing the sculpture as a whole. The cubes at the Mans feet are as important as the building he is holding.

Who exactly is Toronto Man? This guy in Toronto is a nobody in an everybody he could be you, says Balkenhol. This sculpture invites you to take his place and hold the tower [while] standing on the coloured cubes.

The cubes are a decisive detail. On a traditional sculpture, the pedestal separates the viewer from the figure it represents. The base of Balkenhols work suggests a more playful invitation.

That said, Balkenhol makes clear that seeing the man as a developer is not a misreading.

I dont want to illustrate stories but invite people to invent some by looking at my sculptures, he says. I do make proposals but dont tell a story myself up to the end.

Vice writer Mack Lamoureux couldnt decide if the work was intended as a celebration of developers hold on the city or as an indictment of it. Is the sculptor shitting on the developers for gentrifying cities by putting up some luxury condos, he asks, while conceding theres also the real possibility that the developers are in on the joke.

Balkenhol said in a 2014 interview: It is the viewer who fills it with meaning. Astonishingly enough, many beholders can hardly bear this openness.

In the last decade, Toronto has been utterly changed by condo development. The skyline is more glossy, the population is bigger and rental prices keep going up. All of this is rolled up into one big, 21st-century package of globalization.

The Yonge + St. Clair BIA is also pushing to raise the profile of the neighbourhood and make it more of a destination. Public art is a big part of the strategy. Other recent projects include an eight-storey mural by Sheffield, UK street artist Phlegm and the pop-up Tunnel of Glam, an 80-foot long tunnel of sequins running to January 6.

More broadly, the city has a policy that requires a percentage of large-scale development projects go toward public art. Until Toronto Man, no public work has been funded through that program while overtly commenting on the city-building phenomenon that made it possible. Toronto Man bears the heavy weight of Torontos new lived reality on its sturdy, capable shoulders.

Look Closer is a column in which a writer visits public art or an art exhibition and explores why a specific work jumped out at them. Read more here.

@rosemheather

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Look closer at the Toronto Man sculpture on St. Clair West - NOW Magazine

The title may conjure up the Ayn Randian philosophy of theVirtue of Selfishness or Atlas Shrugged. The article does take some of AynRands philosophy and apply this to todays life. Altruism as defined byAuguste Comte, calls for living for the sake of others. The belief that one must place the welfare ofothers over our own self-interest. That a person must become a sacrificiallamb and self-sacrifice as a value and duty. Other interests are subordinate to your owninterests and its is ones moral obligation to live life in this manner.

Ayn Rands definition of selfishnessis that a person has the right to live for their own self. It does not mean the person can do whateverthey want. Morality and ethics are partof the societys culture and laws that need to be obeyed. The person has a right to live a life ofreason, purpose and self-esteem.

It is not my intention to uphold or debate the RandianPhilosophy, rather make the point that in order to be altruistic a person mustbe selfish. Lets look at the basic needs of the Altruistic person that need tobe met for the Altruist to help others.

Health. Too often we have seen people neglect theirown health in order to make life easier for others. While this may work in the short term,eventually your disregard for your health will catch up with you. The longhours at the office, the second job, unhealthy eating habits, the striving caregiver. The selfish motive of Altruism should be to place your health above allelse as a rational interest, in order to pursue the unselfish goals.

Wealth. There needs to be enough to meet the basicneeds of the Altruist. We have seen the exemplary charitable behavior of BillGates or Warren Buffet who have more to give than most people can imagine. Inorder for the normal person to contribute either in time or money, both ofwhich are interchangeable, there should be a buffer of wealth that allows theperson to contribute in a meaningful way.

Mental Fortitude. The Altruist needs to develop theappropriate mental strength so they can immerse themselves in the aid ofothers. It means at times taking the selfishstep to devote time and energy in their own mental wellbeing. To feed theirsoul with the rest, reflection and recuperation it needs.

To quote Ayn Rand from the Fountainhead: To say I Love You one must know first how to say the I. The I must be self-aware, self-accepting and strong.

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Why Selfishness is Necessary - Thrive Global

When the Berlin Wall was erected in August 1961, to stop the flood of refugees from communist East Germany into capitalist West Germany, Ayn Rand was well positioned to state its true meaning to the world.

A native of Russia, Rand was twelve years old when she first heard the communist slogan that man must live for the state and she immediately condemned it as evil, even as the Russian Revolution established its iron grip on the nation. Her first novel, We the Living, published ten years after she had escaped to America, told a semi-autobiographical story of young lovers whose lives and hopes are crushed by the Soviet state.1 In the 1940s, Rand was an outspoken critic of Russian propaganda in movies and Russian infiltration in Americas government.

In the early 1960s, following on the publishing success of her masterwork, Atlas Shrugged, Rand was in demand on college campuses, lecture halls, and radio and television as an interpreter of culture and current events. When the Los Angeles Times invited her to write a syndicated column starting in June 1962, her first contribution introduced her philosophy, Objectivism, which upholds rational self-interest and condemns altruism the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only moral justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty. Using the Berlin Wall and other recent horrors as examples, Rand challenged her readers to see a link between that altruist morality and the disturbing state of the world around them:

You may observe the practical results of altruism and statism all around us in todays world such as the slave-labor camps of Soviet Russia, where twenty-one million political prisoners work on the construction of government projects and die of planned malnutrition, human life being cheaper than food or the gas chambers and mass slaughter of Nazi Germany or the terror and starvation of Red China or the hysteria of Cuba where the government offers men for sale or the wall of East Berlin where human beings leap from roofs or crawl through sewers in order to escape, while guards shoot at fleeing children.

But Rand was just getting warmed up. On August 17, 1962, a young East German bricklayer named Peter Fechter jumped from the window of a building near the wall and into a death strip patrolled by armed East German border guards. Fechter ran across this strip to the main wall, which was over six feet high and topped with barbed wire, and started to climb. But before he could reach the top, guards shot him in the pelvis. He fell back to earth and lay there in the death strip, helpless, screaming, bleeding to death with no medical help from the East German side, and inaccessible to the crowd of West German onlookers and journalists. An hour later, he was dead. The next month, Rand published The Dying Victim of Berlin, in which she used the example of Americas foreign policy to describe the process by which the morality of altruism is destroying the world.

Using the Berlin Wall and other recent horrors as examples, Rand challenged her readers to see a link between that altruist morality and the disturbing state of the world around them.

This is the purpose of shooting an eighteen-year old boy who tried to escape from East Berlin, and letting him bleed to death at the foot of the wall, in the sight and hearing of the Western people.

West Germany is the freest, the most nearly capitalist economy in Europe. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the most eloquent modern evidence of the superiority of capitalism over communism. The evidence is irrefutable. Russia does not intend to refute it. She is staging an ideological showdown: she is spitting in our face and declaring that might is right, that brutality is more powerful than all our principles, our promises, our ideals, our wealth and our incomparable material superiority.

Such is the silent symbol now confronting the world: the steel skyscrapers, the glowing shop windows, the glittering cars, the lights of West Berlin the achievement of capitalism and of capitalisms essence: of free, individual men and, lying on its doorstep, in the outer darkness, the bleeding body of a single, individual man who had wanted to be free.

In the ensuing decades, Rand never stopped reminding the world of Soviet Russias evil and of that evils source in the morality of altruism. During her last public speech, in 1981, the Q&A session featured this exchange:

Interviewer: . . . Is Russia a real threat today?

Ayn Rand: Russia as such was never a threat to anyone. Even little Finland beat Russia twice during World War II. Russia is the weakest and most impotent country on Earth. If they were in a war, most of the miserable Russians would defect. But Russia has one weapon by default which we have surrendered, and that is the morality of altruism. So long as people believe that Russia represents a moral ideal, they will win over us in every encounter. That is one of the reasons for dropping altruism totally, consciously, as the kind of evil which it really is.

When the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, Ayn Rand had been dead for seven years. But we know from her many writings on the subject that she would have joined the civilized world in celebrating the demise of that monstrosity.2 However, she would doubtless have reminded us that so long as altruism reigns unchallenged, such evils and worse ones are inevitable in the future.

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Ayn Rand on the Moral Foundations of the Berlin Wall - New Ideal